Ferrero is close to buying Nestle’s US candy bar business

An Italian confectioner is close to scooping up Nestle’s US candy bar business, The Post has learned.

Ferrero Group — which makes Nutella as well as the Ferrero Roche chocolate-and-hazelnut bon-bons — is poised to shell out as much as $2 billion to win an auction of Nestle brands including Crunch, Butterfinger and Kit Kat, sources said.

That’s on the heels of Ferrero inking a $1.25 billion buyout earlier this month of Ferrara Candy, which makes Red Hots, Now and Later, Jujyfruits and Super Bubble.

If Ferrero buys the Nestle business, it will become the third-biggest US confectionery business, trailing only Hershey and Mars.

Ferrero’s main competition in the auction has been Hershey, but that likely changed this week when Hershey agreed to buy Amplify, the maker of Skinny Pop popcorn, for $1.6 billion.

When it comes to the Nestle auction, “the presumption is Hershey is gone,” a source said.

A small group of private equity firms are the only other known suitors still in the process for Nestle’s $922 million US confectionery business, which also includes Baby Ruth, Sno-Caps and Willy Wonka.

Nestle, which is being prodded by activist investor Dan Loeb to sell assets, is expected to choose a winner in the first few weeks of the new year, a source said.

On Thursday, Nestle said it expected to sell the division by the end of March.

Family-run Ferrero, which now generates more than $12 billion in sales, didn’t want to buy the Nestle US confectionery business without a significant US platform to fold it into, sources said, and the Ferrara deal gives it such a platform.

Ferrero early next year plans on opening an innovation center on Cornell’s new tech campus on Roosevelt Island.

Ferrero and Hershey declined to comment.